1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus which comprises an image carrier, a charger apparatus which charges an effective charging area of the image carrier using a proximity charger roller which is conductive and is disposed in proximity to a surface of the image carrier, an exposure apparatus which forms a latent image in the effective charging area, and a developer apparatus which develops the latent image with a developer.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, in an image forming apparatus, after a charging apparatus uniformly charges an effective charging area of a surface of a photosensitive member which is an image carrier, an exposure apparatus exposes and accordingly writes an electrostatic latent image on thus uniformly charged surface of the image carrier, and a developer apparatus develops the electrostatic latent image and forms a developer image on the surface of the image carrier. Following this, a transfer apparatus transfers the developer image thus formed on the surface of the image carrier onto a transfer member such as a paper, whereby an image is formed.
A charging apparatus which uniformly charges a surface of an image carrier may be a charger roller, a charger brush, a corotron or the like which may be of the contact type which comes into contact with the surface of the image carrier or the non-contact type which does not contact the surface of the image carrier. As a charging apparatus of the non-contact type which uses a charger roller, such an apparatus has been proposed in which a film material is wound around as gap members at the both edge portions of a charger roller which is obtained by disposing an elastic member around the outer circumference of a metal core and a gap corresponding to the thickness of the film material is ensured between the image carrier and the charger roller (See Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2001-350321, for instance).